
Book^ , A^ 



OTJR COUNTRY, AND ITS CLAIMS UPON US. 



AN ORATION 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 






MUIsTICIPAL AUTHOEITIES 



CITIZENS OF PROVIDENCE, 



JULY 4, 1863. 



By Rev. JOHN G. ADAMS. 




PROVIDENCE: 

KN0T7LE3, ANTHONY & CO., CITY PRINTERS. 

1863. 



,3 



CITY OF PROVIDENCE. 




RESOLUTIONS passed by the City Council July 13, 1863. 

Resolved, That tlie thanks of the City Council be, and thej' are hereby, tendered 
to Rev. John G. Adams, for the able and eloquent Oration delivered by hira at the 
late municipal celebration of the anniversary of American Independence. 

Resolved, That the joint Committee appointed to make arransrements for said 
celebration be, and the}- are hcrebj", authorized to request a copy of said Oration 
for publication, and to cause not exceeding five hundred copies of the same to be 
printed in pamphlet form, for the use of the City Council. 
■Witness : 

SAMUEL W. BROWN, City Clerk. 



ORATION. 



Fellow Citizens : — 

The day which invites us to assemble here, is one of 
the most eventful in human history. Familiar as it 
may have become to us, its solemn significance to our 
nation and to our race can know no diminution. Espe- 
cially significant is its coming now ; as it finds us, not 
in the sunshine of sweet peace, and the uninterrupted 
enjoyment of our industrial vocations ; but overshad- 
owed by the heavy clouds of war ; our land darkened 
with armed hosts, who have gone out from quiet homes 
and places of labor, to do their duty as defenders of our 
nation in the field of exhaustive and sanguinary strife. 
If we meet as civilians here, it is a martial atmosphere 
that we breathe, and the stirring trumpet-notes of the 
encampment or battle-ground seem to be calling us to 
the observances of this occasion. 

And what can be more appropriate as a theme for the 
brief time here allotted us, than that of Our Country, 
AND ITS Claims upon us ? I can have little thought of 



4 ORATION. 

any other, as I comply with the generous invitation 
given me to appear as a speaker in this place, to-day. 

The Avell-ltnown words with which our Declaration 
of Independence opens, serve to give us the true expla- 
nation of this day and the events it commemorates. 
" We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men 
are created equal, that they are endowed by their Cre- 
ator with certain unalienable rights ; that among these 
are, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The 
American Colonies had come to the full and bold utter- 
ance of these words, on the Fourth of July, 1776. The 
idea thus embodied was not in reality a new one. It 
had been in the world for long ages. The few, compar- 
atively, of our race had spoken and had heard it ; and 
the world had opposed, and persecuted, and put to death 
those who had sought most sincerely and righteously 
to maintain it. Throuo-h a^-es of lii2;ht and of darkness 
this truth had but little growth or power in the human 
mind. But it was there, and it was not to die there. 
It lived through all the world's change, commotion, rev- 
olution, and the set time had now come when it should 
have a clearer and stronger expression and demonstra- 
tion than our old or new worlds had yet known. This 
Declaration of our Hithers signified the inestimable value 
of man, — of every man, — to himself, to his fellow-man, 
to his God. It asserts the doctrine of human equality ; 
not that all men are born with the same intellectual 
and moral aptitudes, nor that they should possess an 
equal amount of property, nor that all should be 
invested with the same civil privileges ; but the reli- 
gious doctrine that all are of one blood, children of one 
Father, protected by one Providence ; made to aid, to 



ORATION. O 

bless, and to build each other up in truth, justice and 
righteousness, henceforth, while the world stands. I can 
make nothing less than this of the word and spirit of 
this immortal state-paper. It means human equality 
and human rights, in their broadest and most rational 
sense. As in the Avords of Alexander Hamilton ; " All 
men have one common original ; they participate in one 
common nature, and consequently have one common 
right. No reason can be assigned why one man 
should exercise any pre-eminence over his fellow-crea- 
tures, unless they have voluntarily vested him with it." 
Or, in the language of Jefferson : " These are our griev- 
ances, which we have just laid before his Majesty with 
that freedom of lanoi:uao;e and sentiment which becomes 
a free people, claiming their rights as derived from the 
laws of nature, and not as the gift of the Chief Magis- 
trate. Let those flatter who fear ; it is not an American 
art. They know, and will therefore say, that kings are 
the servants, not the proprietors of the people." And 
in the thoughts expressed to Bryan Fairfax by our 
illustrious Washington : — " What is it we are contend- 
ing against ? Is it against the paying of a duty of 
three pence per pound on tea, because burdensome ? 
No ; it is the right only that we have all along disputed. 
* * * If I were in any doubt as to the right 
which the Parliament of Great Britain had to tax us 
without our consent, I should most heartily coincide 
with you in opinion, that to petition, and petition only, 
is the proper method to apply for relief; because we 
should then be asking a favor, and not claiming a right, 
Avhich by the law of nature, and by our constitution, 
we are, in my opinion, indubitably entitled to." These 
strong and healthful words have one meaning j and 



,^ ORATION. 

that is, the significance of man, — his inalienable rights 
and powers. It was this conviction — based on a princi- 
ple — that carried our fathers through the Revolution, 
and srave to us that Constitution which was afterwards 
the work of their hands. The object of this Constitu- 
tion is explicitly declared : — " To form a more perfect 
union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, pro- 
vide for the common defence, promote the general wel- 
fare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves 
and our posterity." This signifies, not despotism nor 
oppression, but republicanism and freedom. If it meant 
the formation of a more perfect union, it could not have 
contemplated the continued and peaceable union of two 
systems radically opposed to each other. If it intended 
to establish justice, it could not have looked to the j^ro- 
tection of an institution that regards and uses men 
mainly as chattels and things. And if to promote the 
general welfare and the blessings of liberty, it could not 
have designed the growth and strengthening of a senti- 
ment that would justify the building up of one class 
upon the subjugation of another. These incongruities 
cannot stand in the strong light of the Constitution on 
which the Republic was based by its immortal founders. 
We have, I think, a statement of the whole truth in 
the excellent language of our historian, Mr. Bancroft, 
as he speaks of the intent of the framers of the Declara- 
tion, on which our Constitution is based. " The Decla- 
ration, avoiding specious and vague generalities, 
grounds itself with anxious care, upon the past, and 
reconciles right and fiict. The heart of Jefferson in 
writing it, and of Congress in adopting it, beat for all 
humanity; the assertion of riglit was made for the 
entire world of mankind, and all coming generations 



ORATION. 7 

without any exception whatever ; for the proposition 
which admits of exceptions can never be self-evident. 
And as it was put forth in the name of the ascendant 
people of that time, it was sure to make the circuit of 
the world, passing everywhere through the despotic 
countries of Europe ; and the astonished nations, as 
they read that all men are created equal, started out 
of their lethargy, like those who have been exiles from 
childhood, when they suddenly hear the dimly remem- 
bered accents of their mother tongue." 

I think, then, that we may accept this idea. I do 
not see how there can be, with Americans, but one 
mind respecting it. What party politicians and dema- 
gogues may have done to modify or obscure it, from time 
to time, is one Qonsideration. What our fathers thought, 
and what we have reason to believe that they meant, 
in these, their grand national declarations, is another. 
We stand on their platform to-day ; and that is broad 
and firm enough for us all. 

Our Country, then, signifies Man ; his equality, his 
true sonship, brotherhood, ability and earthly destina- 
tion. It means democracy ; not the democracy of num- 
bers merely, nor of political parties struggling for 
supremacy and the spoils of the victors ; but a democ- 
racy having in view a common good — " the greatest 
good of the greatest number." It means intelligence, 
industry, thrift ; it means education and religion for the 
masses ; it means 

" Men who their duties know, but know their rights, — 
And knowing, dare maintain them." 

It means this for one people ; means it for all nations 
of mankind. 



8 ORATION. 

Could we, as a nation, have had our healthful growth 
and progress in this great idea, a different record from 
that which the past brings us, would be before us to- 
day. We should not witness this wild disorder of our 
political elements ; we should not hear this martial 
drum-beat and this tramp of armed hosts from one 
end of the land to the other. We should not mourn 
and lament because of this fraticidal war. 

I need not detain you with any elaborate presenta- 
tion of the causes which have led to this rebellion ; of 
the gradual ascendency of the slave-power in our land 
since the days of the Declaration ; — ascendency by the 
acquisition of new territory, by compromises, by readi- 
ness on the part of the North to yield to the demands 
of the South ; of the threats of disunion early made ; of 
the rise and suppression of Nullification under the 
administration of President Jackson ; of the battles of 
the giants in our Congress upon the principles which 
that rebellious movement involved ; of the admission of 
Texas, thus widening still more the Southern domain ; 
of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, awakening 
the old question as to the extension of slavery into the 
territories ; of the new demand of slavery to go where- 
ever it might will to go, in our land ; of the incom- 
ing of an administration pledged to the maintenance of 
this olden ground, the constitutional rights of the slave- 
holder, but the transientness of slavery and the perma- 
nence of freedom. These are, or ought to be, to most 
of us, famihar themes. Gradually, but surel}^, the crisis 
came. That possessed one, so significantly laid in 
1831, having taken unto himself other spirits of greater 
virulence, and indulged in basest communion with them, 



ORATION. 9 

was ready for the revolt. He had prepared himself for 
the disastrous work, — had laid his plans for the uprising ; 
had in part counted the cost, — although, as we believe, 
with blinded eyes ; had seduced men accounted loyal 
who were administering our government, to join in his 
treachery, and so to dispose of our national means and 
forces as to afford special aid to the insurgents in case 
the rebellion should come. It came ; and that first gun 
from Sumter opened our civil war ; — opened it from 
the South, not from the North; and it is upon us, as we 
assemble to keep our national festival to-day. For two 
long years has this conflict gone on, sacrificing the 
noblest life-blood of our nation ; bringing desolations 
worse than death to millions of hearts, and taxing to 
an extent almost incredible the material resources of 
the people. The rebellious ones are still defiant ; and 
our government still persists in maintaining its own 
cause, — in employing all its powers for the overthrow 
of the revolters, and the redemption of the nation from 
the evils with which they would overwhelm us. 

What, then, — and this is the time and occasion for 
proposing the question, — what are the claims of our 
country upon us ? I make this inquiry to-day, fellow 
citizens, not as a sectionalist, not as a political partisan, 
but as an American, standing upon the old platform of 
our national Declaration, and as a firm believer in the 
call of God upon us to see that this doctrine which we 
have proclaimed to the world,, is cherished, maintained, 
and perpetuated on this American continent. 

It is our imperative duty, then, to sustain our 
national cause, because of lis justness before God and 

2 



10 ORATION. 

in the sig^ht of all men. " Thrice armed is he who hath 
his quarrel just." And if this be not a just one on our 
part, I am unable to call up any instance in human 
history where contention for^a principle or cause could 
be deemed justifiable. Of the Constitutional right of 
secession I would not argue now, as time forbids it, and 
because I believe that there is but little if anything to 
say which will not strengthen the conclusion that no 
such right exists. It is the moral asjDect of the deed 
that I would now consider. Regard the unreasonable- 
ness, the recklessness, the wickedness of this rebellion. 
Civil war, with all its horrors, thus invoked and persis- 
ted in ! And wherefore ? They who demand and 
introduce such a calamity ought to be able to give 
such reasons for it as would justify them before the 
nations. Our revolutionary fathers had the strongest 
reasons for their uprising. Their statement of griev- 
ances, made against the British government, stands 
acknowledged as just, at this hour. This statement has 
been read in our hearing, to-day. But no such reasons 
can be offered for their mad course, on the part of these 
seceding ones. On the contrary, we find, that instead 
of being oppressed and injured by the North, they have 
had, from time to time, its ready acquiescence in almost 
every demand made by them for new favors. Facts 
declare, that before the Declaration of Independence 
W' as adopted, one of the most significant passages in the 
original draft was stricken out because of the sensitive- 
ness of Southern slaveholders respecting it. In the 
formation and adoption of the Constitution, the South 
asked a provision for the recovering of her fugitive 
slaves, and obtained it ; also, a representation in Con- 
gress for three-fifths of her whole slave population, and 



ORATION. 



11 



obtained it ; also, the right to continue the slave trade 
for twenty years, and obtained it. These were the 
compromises ; the two first remaining in force until the 
breaking out of the rebellion, the last,— that relating 
to the slave trade.—expiring in 1808. Then came the 
acquisition of Louisiana, especially advantageous to 
Southern interests ; then that of the Florida Territory, 
involving the enormously expensive Seminole w^ar; 
then Texas, with its- vast resources ; so that at the 
beginning of the present rebellion, there were in the 
Union, present and prospective, nine slave States, 
acquired at the expense of more than five hundred 
millions of dollars, of which more than four-fifths had 
been paid by the free States. This, surely, is not evi- 
dence of the unfriendliness of the North towards the 
South. Nor does this unfriendliness appear in the Mis- 
souri Compromise ; nor in its final repeal ; nor in that 
agreement of Northern men to a more stringent law 
for the recovery of fugitive slaves ; nor in the decisions 
of the Supreme Court, (composed of judges from both 
sections of the Union,) specially favorable to the slave- 
holding interests of the South. Nor is it discernable in 
the facts that the South has had a controlling power in 
our national legislation and administration of the gov- 
ernment, in one or more of its branches, ever since the 
adoption of the Constitution ; and that for more than 
seventy years but three Presidents were elected who 
did not receive the electoral votes of the slave States. 
These, surely, are not grievances in view of which this 
terrible outbreak can be justified. 

Difierent and contradictory reasons have been stated 
by political leaders in the seceding States, for discontent 



12 ORATION. 

on their part. Now the Fishing Bounties are thought 
to be unequal ; then the Navigation Laws ; then the 
Tariff. In reference to tlie two first named, we may 
remark, that if the South failed to reap from them 
equal advantages with the North, it was because their 
industrial and commercial interests were on different 
foundations. Tiiese results were inevitable. But the 
North was not blamable because of this. No protection 
which these laws guaranteed to the South was with- 
held. And as to the Tariff, we hear of this as lately as 
November 1860, in the House of Representatives of 
Georgia, from Mr. Stevens, now the Vice President of 
the Rebel Confederacy : — " The Tariff no longer dis- 
tracts the public councils. Reason has triumphed. The 
present Tariff was voted for by Massachusetts and 
South Carolina. The lion and the lamb lay down 
together : every man in the Senate and House from 
Massachusetts and South Carolina, I think, voted for 
it." 

But the main reason alleged by the South in justifi- 
cation of its act of secession is, the opposition of the 
North to slavery. And what was this but a sentiment 
of natural growth, a conviction deepening in the public 
mind, as the two systems, freedom and servitude, in 
their practical operations confronted each other ? It 
was not any more wonderful that the North should 
have an increasing attachment to free institutions, than 
that the South should become more and more wedded 
to the evil of slavery, '' first endured, then pitied, then 
embraced," as the evil has been. The trouble of our 
Southern States caine of the nature of their institutions. 
These have uot been favorable to the upbuilding of the 



ORATION. 



13 



people ; to the education of the masses ; to free labor, 
and free thought. The few have ruled, and the many 
have been subjected. While the South has been study- 
incr to maintain its slave system, the North has out- 
stepped her in all the elements of national greatness 
and power. The tide of European emigration settmg 
into the Northern and Western States, has given them 
a vast preponderance over those of the South, so that 
there has seemed to the disquieted leaders there, no 
other alternative but to surrender as rulers of the na- 
tion, or retire by themselves, where they could exer- 
cise that control of the subservient ones to which they 
had been so long accustomed. 

The root of secession is, opposition to that principle 
upon which our Declaration of Independence is based. 
As John Adams wrote to Gen. Gates in 1776 :— " All 
our Diisfortunes arise from a shigle source, the resis- 
tance of the Southern Colonies to Kepublican Govern- 
ment. * * Popular principles and axioms are 
abhorrent to the inchnations of the Barons of the 
South " As Dr. Smythe, a prominent citizen of Charles- 
ton, has so candidly admitted:-" It is not the election 
of a Republican President, nor the non-execution ol the 
Fiio^itive Slave Law. The real difficulty lies far back 
of "these things. It consists in the atheistic, Kcd 
Republican doctrine of the Declaration of Independ- 
ence • and until this is trampled under foot, there can 
be no peace." As the declaration of the causes of sep- 
aration, adopted by South Carohna, concludes :-'• All 
hope of remedy is rendered vain by the fact that the 
public opinion of the North has invested a great polit- 
ical error with the sanctions of a more erroneous 



14 ORATION. 

religious belief." And as the Richmond Enquirer of 
this very year declares : — " For Liberty, Equality and 
Fraternit}^, we have imperatively substituted, Slavery; 
Subordination, Government. And this is the true rea- 
son why we have been left without the sympathy of 
the nations, until we conquered that sympathy with 
the ed<j;e of the sword. The establishment of the Con- 
federacy is a distinct re-action against the whole course 
of the mistaken civilization of the age." This, in the 
nineteenth century, and on this American ground once 
consecrated to Freedom and Human Progression! 
This brazen falseness — this frantic attempt to prove 
darkness light, and to turn back the onward marches of 
the nations ! Could the imbecility or madness of any 
European or Asiatic despotism say more ? The Decla- 
ration is right, and this detestable spirit of rebellion 
asrainst it, wrong;. Hence the claims of our nation 
ujoon us in this perilous hour. 

The North did not invoke this war. With a few 
exceptions, the great bod}^ and soul of the North were 
unionists — unionists with slo.veryor without it; willing 
to allow slavery its legal rights according to the olden 
enactment. There luid l:»een no Avrong committed to 
justify this rash and murderous procedure. It was the 
result of plans long in prospect by restless spirits, and 
now sprung upon the nation under pretence of what 
might possibly occur in consequence of a Presidential 
election. " What right has the North assailed ?" signif- 
icantly asked a prominent Southern man, from whom I 
have already quoted, in the Georgia Convention in 
January, 18G I : — " What interest of the South has been 
invaded ? What justice has been denied ? and what 



ORATION. 15 

claim founded in justice and right lias been withheld ? 
Can either of you, to-day, name one goyernmental act of 
wrong, deliberately and purposely done by the govern- 
ment of Washington, of which the South has a right to 
complain ? I challenge the answer !" And well he 
mioht. Secession was unmitig-ated rashness. There is 
not a solitary sunbeam of the fraternal in it. When 
new compromises were suggested in the " Peace Con- 
vention" (that school where some of our free-state men 
learned more in a few weeks than they had seemed to 
have realized for years before), the revolters were pro- 
tracting their debates, while their friends in the seced- 
ins^ states were musterino- their forces for a more effec- 
tive action in the work of desperation and death. They 
did not seek the redress of their grievances, real or 
imaginary. They did not desire friendly conference 
nor mutual conciliation. It was revolt, separation, civil 
war. 

I stand not here to accuse the South of all blame, 
nor to excuse the North from its share of it in some of 
the controversies which have been going on between 
them. We are all human, and are affected by human 
frailty in our words and actions. But this I mean to 
affirm, that if the responsibility of this dreadful war 
rests any"svhere, it is upon those who, after having been 
blest, as have these seceding ones, by a national govern- 
ment like ours, could raise their traitorous hands in the 
work of its destruction. This we deem an unspeakable 
wrong ; not our wrong doing, but a wrong done to us 
on the part of our brethren. And more, — a wrong done 
to themselves ; one of the greatest they could have 
committed. Because, nothing can be gained for them, 
in this contest, better than that which they might have 



16 ORATION. 

secured without it, throii2:h the rio-htful workins-s of our 
government, and the progressive spirit of our free in- 
stitutions. 

The past and present testimony of Southern men 
themselves, places this matter in its true light. Said 
Gov. Eandolph, in the debates of the A^irginia Conven- 
tion on the United States Constitution, — " I believe 
that, as sure as there is a God in heaven, our safety, 
our political happiness and existence, depend on the 
iniion of the States ; and that without this union, the 
p>eople of this and the other states will undergo the un- 
speakable calamities which discord, faction, turbulence, 
war and bloodshed have produced in other countries. 
When I maturely weigh the advantages of the Union, 
and dreadful consequences of its dissolution ; when I see 
safety on my right and destruction on my left ; when I 
behold respectability and happiness acquired by the 
one but annihilated by the other, I cannot hesitate to 
decide in favor of the former." And in the same 
strain do we hear Mr. Stephens speaking in a South- 
ern assembly, before he identified himself with seces- 
sion. "It may be that out of it (the Union) we may 
become greater and more prosperous, but I am candid 
and sincere in telling 3'ou that I fear, if we rashly 
evince passion, and, without sufficient cause, shall take 
that step, thiit instead of becoming greater, or more 
peaceful, prosperous and happy — instead of becoming 
gods, we will become demons, and at no distant day 
conmience cutting one another's throats." Language 
cannot be more expressive tlian this. The}^ cannot 
have greater strength, greater security, or a nobler 
name for the present or future, by thus tearing them- 
selves away from their sister free States, and setting 



ORATION. 17 

themselves up as a Confederacy in the eyes of the world, 
with slavery, and not freedom, as the basis of their polit- 
ical vitality and perpetuity. Such fanaticism is lament- 
able to the last degree ; and against its monstrous 
inroads we protest, and stand up to preserve our gov- 
ernment from them. We are rig-ht in this course. To. 
take any other, would be shame and ruin to us. The 
denunciations of a world would be upon us. We are 
forever bound to defend our dearest interests against 
those who would imperil them. We have love enough 
for our present Constitution and laws to stand by them 
to the last ; honor enough for our old and venerated 
flag of the Union to keep it floating high and free ! 
The right, then, is ours. And this is the best that can 
be said of any cause. "The right" is the true soul's 
word, alwavs. It is man's srreatness and strength. It 
is the stability of the eternal throne. 

'' They are slaves who dare not be 
In the right, with two or thi-ee." 

We are in the right with great numbers, and ought to 
prevail. 

And how shall Ave prevail ? I answer plainly : — by 
havinsf a whole heart in this conflict. We must be 
thoroughly and persistently earnest in our work with 
this rebellion. Tampering with it is suicide. While 
the people exercise their right, as, thank God, they may? 
under our government, of criticising, honestly, candidly 
and fraternally, ways and means proposed or employed 
to maintain the ascendency of the government and tri- 
umph over its opposers, they are bound to give that 
which they have constituted their government their 
strongest and most constant support. Our President 



18 ORATION. 

is no usurper, but the chosen of the people. He is 
where they have placed him. So long as he holds, 
unimpeached, this place, we owe him our unqualified 
loyalty. We cannot doubt his patriotism. Let us con- 
sider the weight of care and responsibility resting upon 
him. He is the Constitution ; he is the Government. 
If we set him and his administration aside, we acknowl- 
edge no government ; we are invoking anarchy. Cries 
of peace, and professions of peace parties in this emer- 
gency, are either the delusion of fanaticism, or the 
madness of treason. There can be nop'eace but through 
the triumph of the right, in this conflict. And, then, 
we have no strength to spend in this fuming and air- 
beating. The enemy has his grapple upon us for life 
or death. He means division, distraction, anything 
that will weaken and destroy us. What do we mean ? 
He spurns all oft'ers of any parties, only as these may 
be favorable to his desperate intentions, — favorable to 
the dissolution of the Union. New political parties, 
new issues made through the ballot-boxes, will not 
answer now. So far as we can see, it is only by the 
terrible weapons of war that we can work out our 
national salvation. Therefore, to denounce the war as 
unjust on the part of the government, to oppose lawful 
conscription and appropriations made to sustain it, to 
uphold, in any wise, those who arc willing to connive 
at such measures, is but taking part with the adversa- 
ries of this Union, and calling their evil good. To 
pause, and ask for peace, now, is to say to the revolters, 
"Have your own way; rule and ruin !" — to the hosts of 
the patriotic dead who have iallen in this strife, " Your 
hopes of triumph were delusive ; your heroic sacrifices 
have been made in vain !" — to the millions of our 
bereaved and mourning, whose hearts the war has made 



ORATION. 19 

desolate, " Your precious gifts and unutterable griefs 
are alike unavailing," — to the spirit of Freedom, 
" Depart !" — to the Spirit of Tyranny and Anarchy, 
" Come and reign over us with increased power and 
dominion !" Considerations like these are enough to 
stir the life-blood in the most sluggish veins. We 
need the consecration of all our powers ; — a determina- 
tion, and if it must be, a desperateness, in this righteous 
cause which our seceding countrymen themselves have 
evinced in an «(«righteous one. We need the enthusi- 
asm which made the charges of Cromwell's Ironsides 
invincible ; the impulse of a holy sentiment ; soldiers 
that have a higher motive than their " monthly pay ;" 
and above all, leaders who have no small jealousies or 
competitions to attend to, no political jDarty interests to 
subserve, no reserved rights to come between them and 
duty to their country ; but leaders whose force of moral 
character will commend them to their soldiers ; who 
know and feel the greatness of the mission with which 
they are charged ; and who mean so to use the abilities 
God has given them as to make it successful. To no 
other leaders but such as these should the conduct of 
this war be entrusted. 

Our earnestness, to be effective, must be something 
more than spasmodic. It ought to be continuous, 
untiring. The North, notwithstanding the great sacri- 
fices which it has already made, has taken the war too 
easily, if not indifferently. We are told that it has 
been growing rich out of this contest , that some of its 
great cities were never so increased in wealth before ; 
that greater expenditures, greater extravagancies 
among many of our people, have not been known in 
our past history. If this be so, wc need awakening 



20 ORATION. 

Better would it be for us that our means were narrowed 
down nearer to the line of our actual necessities ; that 
the store and market prices of our Northern cities were 
such as those we have had reported from Richmond 
and Charleston, than that our fullness should have the 
tendency to stupify our perceptions of right, or incline 
us to pocket our patriotism. This will not do, if we 
mean to break down or to live down this rebellion. If we 
have increased w^ealth, then the more need is there of 
increased action in the use of it. But wealth alone will 
not answer the call of our country now. Men are 
demanded. Our business is to muster forces into the 
field, — all the forces we need, all that we may need for 
years to come, or until the rebellion is ended. Every 
man of the requisite ability should be in readiness to 
do something that will tell directly upon the prosecu- 
tion of this war. The power of the North is adequate 
to all the emergencies that are upon us. It can grind 
the rebellion to powder. But it must go about the 
work in earnest ; and not stop too long to read 
stock-rates, speculate as to new investments, nor build 
too many dwelling-palaces, warehouses or factories. 
When the cry comes, as now, " The Philistines' be upon 
thee !" let not our Samson be found shorn of his locks, 
nor sleeping. 

Political partyism ought to sink in this emergency, 
and but one party be known to us all, — that of Ameri- 
can patriots. We have reason for gladness that so 
much of this favor has been ours. INIay it be more and 
more increased. Our republicanism, or democracy, or 
whatever else of partyism we may have, ought to cen- 
ter here, — in love for our country, and undying interest 
in its behalf Our countryman, Mr. Douglas, said, on 



ORATION. 21 

the breaking out of the war, " There are but two par- 
ties now, patriots and traitors." It is so. All the par- 
ties of the past and present are in the ship together, 
and the great questions are, " Sink or swim ? Survive 
or perish ?" If we go down as a nation, woe to all our 
parties ; if we triumph, all parties will have reason for 
rejoicing. 

Again ; let us have constancy and trust in this con- 
flict. We shall, if we rise to a right view of it. The 
most momentous question with us now, is not, when will 
the war terminate, but lioio ? Nothing is written more 
plainly in past history, than that human progress is 
God's order among the nations, and that this progress 
implies great cost. I cannot believe, as some pretend 
and teach, that war is the normal condition of mankind, 
and peace only the occasional lull between its out- 
breaks. I can utter no such sentiment while I have a 
Bible to read, or a Christian temple to stand in. There 
is no hope for a perpetual blessing through peace, on this 
earth, in this view ; and Christianity in its actual work 
with man, is only a pleasing prophecy or dream. But 
it is not so. Men were made to be righteous. This is 
God's call upon them ; and through all these terrible 
conflicts, they will yet know and obey this law ot their 
being. Deliverance is possible — is practicable. Peace 
is ; prolonged peace, improved peace, increasing peace. 
Nations need not perish in corruptio]i, but grow, and 
prosper, and be blest from age to age. This is reason, 
scripture, the philosophy of God, and of humanity. 
But the cost at which these blessings are to be secured, 
has already been made evident in the history of our 
race. This cost has been, untold material treasures, 
sums that will never be computed by mortals -, prayers, 



22 ORATION. 

sufl^erings, agonies, lives of tlie truest and holiest the 
world ever knew. Freedom has made its way thus far 
with man through conflict and storm, and still her voice 
speaks to-day : — 

"I slum 
No strife nor pang beneath tlie sun, 
When human rights are staked and won. 

I knelt with Ziska's hunted flock, 
I watched in Toussaint's cell of rock, 
I walked with Sidney to the block. 

The moor of Marston felt my tread. 
Through Jersey snows the march I led, 
My voice Magenta's charges sped." 

If the world has freedom and j^^^ace at last, it must 
pay the price for them. We must, for the good which 
we would have ; for the blessing of a true government 
— a true republic — a true democracy — a national being 
that shall come up to the letter and spirit of our grand 
old national Declaration. 

Our Revolutionary fathers appealed to the Supreme 
Ruler of the Universe as witness of the rectitude of 
their intentions in making their avowal before the world. 
We have accepted that avowal, and He who sitteth in 
the heavens will hold us responsible for a righteous 
adherence to it. And in this conviction, we may find 
the heart and strength we need through all this strife. 
Whether it be brief or protracted, let us feel that it is 
our strife all the way through, and that by our fidelity 
only, in all its emergencies, will oiu' triumph at last, be 
made sure. There may be much for us to endure, but 
let us not think of despondency, while we can think of 



ORATION. 23 

God, and hope in liis name. It cannot be that he has 
given such wondrous jDOwer to the cause of hnman 
right and freedom and progress on these shores, in the 
past, in vain ; that He has called ns to liberty in behalf 
of all the nations, only to have our hope and theirs 
extinguished for the present and for the ages to 
come. It cannot be that the Declaration of Independ- 
ence was but the rhetoric of political and moral fanati- 
cism ; that Lexington, and Trenton, and Valley Forge, 
and Yorktown are unmeaning names in history ; that 
the martvrs of our first Eevolution fell for naui>iit ; that 
Washington stands up in his stateliness and grandeur, 
an illusion before an admirino; world. It cannot be that 
all this growth in physical, mental, and moral power, 
all this extension of territory, all this accumulation and 
reach of resources, all this heritage and fruitage thus 
far, are meaningless ; — all these smiles of a gracious 
Providence but preludes to his unrelenting and wither- 
ing frown upon us, as he gives us up to destruction ! 
We will harbor no such gloomy forebodings. If we 
who would perpetuate these blessings are ready for 
duty ; — and this we must ever have in the account, as 
heaven is true, — if we rest in God's right to sustain us, 
history will prove that we are now only passing 
through, it may be, the darkest and most hazardous 
defile we have ever entered in our onward course as a 
nation ; but one which will bring us out into wider and 
more glorious fields of national occupancy and improve- 
ment than we have ever possessed before. The Al- 
mighty has his meaning in this judgment, whatever 
our surmises or doubts, our hopes or fears may be. 
Let us trust. With Him all things are possible. He 
can level the mountains, cast up the valleys, make the 



24 ORATION. 

crooked straight, and the rough places plain. The 
march of humanity is onward. Woe to the forces that 
dare to impede it ! Woe to the hosts that would throw 
themselves across its hard yet triumphal pathway! 
They wdll only prove 

" How weak, how powerless is each arm, 
Against Omnipotence !" 

We may be hopeful, then, in view of the future. 
This crisis means something more than uprising, con- 
tention, destruction. It means change, advancement, 
education out of old errors and wrongs, into new views, 
practices, and institutions. " That civil war is an evil," 
says Milton, "I dispute not. But that it is the greatest 
of evils, that I stoutly deny. It doth indeed appear to 
the misjudging to be a worse calamity than bad gov- 
ernment, because its miseries are collected within a 
short space and time, and may easily, at one view, be 
taken in and perceived. * * * W^hen the devil of 
Tyranny hatli gone into the body politic, he departs 
not but wdth struggles and foaming, and great convul- 
sions. Shall he, therefore, vex it forever, lest in going 
out, he for a moment rend and tear it ?" Afflictive and 
terrible as is this crisis, there is an improved state of 
things beyond it ; — new knowledge, experience and life. 
We are not more surely making change and improve- 
ment in the methods of our warfare in our army and 
navy, such as will serve to put all nations on new bases 
of national defence, than realizing other new revela- 
tions of equal importance to us all. We are learning 
what a heavy taxation this evil of slavery has been to 
us ; how it has ruled, and at last culminated in this dire- 
ful outbreak. We are learning: — our most conservative 



I 



I 



ORATION. 25 

and long-suffering ones are, by this time — that " Com- 
promises " offered to this Moloch, Secession, however 
humiliating to us, have been only spurned, while sepa- 
ration and destruction of the Union has been the ruling 
determination on the part of the revolting ones. We 
are learning; — the most conservative too — that all fears 
of injuring the " peculiar institution " of the South may 
as well be laid aside ; that, as it has had no mercy on 
the nation, whatever there may remain to it of Consti- 
tutional justice, it deserves no tender mercy at the 
nation's hand. We are learning that if the South 
would be truly prosperous, it must in process of 
time be Northernized ; that "cotton" need not be 
" king," but a truly democratic institution and power, 
built up and sustained by free labor, and not holding 
its rights by denying others theirs ; that Virginia may 
be as jDrosperous as Pennsylvania, Kentucky as Ohio, 
South Carolina as Massachusetts or Rhode Island, if the 
visible and unmistakable means of prosperity are 
employed alike by all. We are learning to live with- 
out legalized slavery at our national capital ; and have 
become more than ever inclined to keep it from our 
territories. We are becoming reconciled to the loss of 
the Missouri Compromise in view of the gain of the 
Missouri Emancipation. We are welcoming the loyal 
black man out of that chatteldom where he had no ris-hts 
to be respected, to his place in the army of freedom, 
where he may realize his rights and manfully strive to 
maintain them. 

We are thus learning ; and the change consequent of 

this learning is inevitable. We never can have just 

the old order of thino-s ao;ain. God has seen to this in 

advance of us. And we do not desire this order. We 

M 4 



26 ORATION. 

ouglit neither to pray nor to hope for it ; J^ut rather for 
a good in the future answering somewhat to the tre- 
mendous sacrifice we are now making. We may seek 
the preservation of all the good belonging to this past. 
We may have the same Constitution, in substance, but 
a better interpretation of it; such as the fathers of our 
nation intended by it, and such as the discriminating 
minds of all the world must know that it means, wher- 
ever its testimony shall come to them. Let us, then, 
be hopeful. 

"March at the head of the ideas of your age," said 
Louis Napoleon, " and then these ideas will follow and 
support you. If you march behind them, they will 
drag you on. And if you march against them, they 
will certainly prove your downfall." Well said. What 
we have really gained as a nation, has been by adher- 
ance to the principles upon which this government was 
founded. What the South has lost, has been in conse- 
quence of falling behind them. Notice the contrast 
betwen the spirit of 1776 and that of the South in 
1861. That erasure made from the original draft of 
the Declaration of Independence, to which I have once 
alluded, was in accordance with these principles. It 
asserts that George III had waged war with human 
nature, had violated its most sacred rights of life and 
liberty in the persons of a distant people, captivating 
and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, 
or to a more miserable death in their transportation 
thither ; that he had suppressed every legislative at- 
tempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable traffic in 
human flesh ; and to add to these evils, was then excit- 
ing these very people to rise in arms against us ; " thus 



ORATION. 27 

paying oiFfo^iiei' crimes committed against the liberties 
of one people with crimes which he urges them to com- 
mit against the lives of another." In the Preamble of 
the Louisiana Ordnance of Secession, is the statement 
of the full conviction of those who drafted it, that 
^^ slavery engrafted on this land by France, Spain, Eng- 
land, and the States of North America, is the most 
humane of all existing servitudes ; that it is in obedi- 
ence to the laws of God, and recognized by the Consti- 
tution of our country, sanctioned by the decrees of its 
tribunals ; that it feeds and clothes its enemies and the 
world, leaves to the black laborer a more considerable 
sum of comfort, happiness and liberty than the inexo- 
rable labor required of the free servants of the wdiole 
universe ; and that each emancipation of an African, 
without being of any benefit to him, would necessarily 
condenm to slavery one of our own blood and our 
race." 

"We wonder not that a degeneracy like this would 
make war upon wdiat it calls " the mistaken civilization 
of the age ;" — ^^ mistaken," because flashing its light in 
upon this darkness and corruption ! " Slavery," says 
De Tocqueville, " is one of those institutions which lasts 
a thousand years, if no one asks why it exists ; but 
which it becomes impossible to maintain from the hour 
that the demand is made." The principles upon which 
our free institutions are based, are ever insisting upon 
this demand. And we are bound to " march at the 
head of " them. 

I do not make pretensions, fellow citizens, to the 
knowledge of any special remedy for this hitherto and 



28 ORATION. 

still vexatious evil of which I speak. I Must leave the 
development of this good, so much desired, to " the logic 
of events," to God, and to the good minds and true 
hearts of this American people. We are just as compe- 
tent to work out this problem involving the white and 
black races, their relative social, industrial and polit- 
ical relations on this continent, — or our good part of 
it, — on the principles of Freedom, as we are to do 
any other work which God in his wisdom and justice 
requires of us as a nation. Out inventive powers have 
yet large fields for action ; and here is one of the most 
inviting and honorable. Olii' material, mental and 
moral resources are sufficient to the accomplishment of 
this work, in time, if we have the will to perform it- 
Heaven liel]D us all to that ! 

And now, as we are unitino; with millions of our loval 
countr^'men in the celebration of this ever welcome 
festal day, let us be thankful as we realize the connec- 
tion of our own city and State with this imperative call 
of our nation upon us. As true hearts and united 
hands made Rhode Island honorable in other days of 
peril and strife ; as she was foremost among the sister 
Colonies in expressing, by law, her opposition to human 
bondage, and in her declaration by law, also, that " per- 
sonal liberty is an essential part of the rights of man- 
kind ;" as she lighted the first beacon-fire of the Revolu- 
tion, and in that strife, on hardest battlefields, won just 
and highest renown ; so, in these times of sternest trial, 
has she come up to this new consecration to the cause 
of our national Union. Among the first to respond to 
their country's call lor defenders, were the thousands 
who have left our homes to lay down their lives, if 



'ORATION. 29 

need be, that tliiis their nation's life and honor be 
secured. Our sacred dead would we have in holy 
remembrance to-day : 

" Those great spirits that went dowii like suns, 
And left upon the mountain-tops of death 
A light that made them lovely." 

They are ours still ; they are Freedom's evermore ! 
While we mourn for them, our sorrow shall not be 
weakness, but an inspiration to new life and a nobler 
duty. We can continue to give, to sacrifice, to suffer 
and endure. We have .ill strono- arms and trustins; 
souls. Our venerated seats of learning, our churches, 
our work-shops, farms, houses of merchandise, monied 
institutions, our hopeful homes, are they not all pledged 
to their country's weal ? Narrow, compared with sister 
fraternities, as are the boundaries of our State, they are 
wide enough to give her heart" freest pulsation in the 
good cause of the Union. This heart will beat true, 
while her cities, towns, and villa«res and rural homes 

7 7 C3 

are aglow with a loyal devotion, and this, her chief city, 
crowning the head of her broad aild beautiful inland 
waters, sheds out the diamond lustre of its patriotism 
far over the land and the sea ! 

Let us then, fellow countrymen, heed well the lesson 
of this golden hour : Liberty as the inalienable rigid of 
every man — of every race ; as the strength and glor3^ of 
the State ; as the grandest hope of all the nations. 
Unto this liberty have we been called. Youthful 
America chants its praises in this Christian temple to- 
day. Its sacred cause has been committed to our 
hands, and woe be to us if we are disloyal to its claims ! 
Let us study its divine significance ; let its spirit per- 



30 . ORATION.' 

vade the hearts of our people. Let it inspire the citi- 
zen in his daily rounds of toil and duty ; let our homes 
be sanctified by its holy inbreatliings upon them ; let 
mothers teach it to their lisping children ; let youth 
and beauty seek its communion ; and venerable age 
find new vigor in the rehearsal of its doings in the days 
of old ! Let song continue to proclaim it ; and banners 
bear it onward ; and statues rise to its honor ; and 
learning do it reverence ; and religion give to it her 
purest devotions. So shall the blessing of the Highest 
be ours tlirou(2:h all this dark conflict, and in the now 
unseen issues thereof The cloud shall be lifted, the 
problem solved • " the paradoxes of the evening shall 
become the truths of the morrow." We shall better 
understand our deluded and alienated brethren now in 
arms against our common country, and they will better 
understand us. We shall prove that not subjugation of 
the rebellion only, but the liberation of the people, has 
been our work with them, all through this terrible Avar. 
We shall have new conversions to the right ; we shall 
silence the mean reproaches with which foreign nations 
have asailed us ; we shall acquire new fliith in self-gov- 
ernment. Our enterprise shall have new life in new 
resources ; our politics — what they most need — a high- 
er tone and meaning ; our educational interests a far 
wider sphere ; our religion a truer utterance and a 
more regenerative power. Gladness and praise shall go 
up in our morning orisons, and linger in our evening- 
vespers. 

" The mighty West sh;ill bless the East, and sea shall answer sea ; 
And mountain unto mountain call, ' Praise God, lor we are free !'" 



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